Age and Place: Environments of the Old & Young

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

This panel will foster conversation about the role of age and life stage in environmental history. Age shapes nearly every dimension of human-nature interactions – how people understand the natural world, how they make meaning from environmental experiences, and how their physical capacities permit them to move and work within it. The very young and old are most vulnerable to environmental extremes -- from wildfire smoke to toxic pollutants—and consequentially targets for protection.

The assembled panelists, historians of youth and aging, will offer snapshots about how conceptions of life stage and environment intersected in specific times and places, followed by a moderated conversation about the role of age in environmental history. Jeffrey Sanders’ “Children, Fallout, and Environmentalism in Wales and the United States” examines how workers, policymakers, and reformers conceived of the threat posed by radioactive particles on the lives of children in two national contexts. Alex Parry’s “Childproof: Child Protection, Regulation, and the Domestic Environment” examines how American policymakers singled out children for federal intervention in the postwar era, alternatively defining them as exceptions to the usual rules of consumer rules of consumer product safety and as equally relevant to their parents. Scout Blum, by contrast, examines how pre-teens conceptualized past, present, and future with nature between 1960-1980. Children characterized present nature as a recreation space and celebrated past technological leaps that transformed environments. But as they envisioned the future of nature, they made dystopian predictions that reflected their growing environmental awareness. Finally, Willa Granger will examine how older adults in institutional settings relate to the natural world visually, spatially, and behaviorally. Drawing on institutional documents and extended interviews, Granger traces the role doors, windows, porches, sills, and bedside tables play in mediating older adults’ relationship to the world beyond.

Sub Unit

• ASEH Annual Conference

Moderator

• Kendra Smith-Howard, University at Albany (SUNY)

Presenters

• Jeffrey Sanders, washington state university

• Elizabeth (Scout) Blum, Troy University

• Alexander Parry, Johns Hopkins University

• Willa Granger, Florida Atlantic University